Rare Book Monthly

A “Bookjacker's” Website

- by Michael Stillman

Antiques.gift website focuses on books' language.

We are grateful to Montreal bookseller Michel Lanteigne for bringing this website to our attention. While reluctant to call it an outright scam, it is certainly very misleading to its customers. Mr. Lanteigne has supplied us with an appropriate term - “bookjacker” - to describe the business.

The website is called Antique.gift Book Shop and it is located in Riga, Latvia. They advertise offering “more then [sic] 10 million books in more than 30 languages!” Latvia is not a place you might expect to find such a large bookseller, but the internet is international in scope. Still, how did a firm in Latvia make the necessary connections to get so many booksellers to place their listings on this obscure site, including Mr. Lanteigne?

The answer is, they didn't. This is where the term “bookjacker” comes in. They are copying listings from other sites, likely AbeBooks, but perhaps others. This is not done with the consent of the lister. Nor does this site credit the listing dealer, as does Abe. It doesn't claim to be shipping the books themselves. It speaks of books being sent by “suppliers.” “We deliver books directly from suppliers,” the website explains. However, the purchase is made from Antiques.gift, and you might incorrectly believe they had some special relationship with the “suppliers,” rather than just buying the book from them off the internet like any other customer, and having it shipped to your address.

For example, we found artwork for the paperback cover of The Planet Buyer, by Peter Bramley, artwork by Cordwainer Smith. It is one of Mr. Lanteigne's listings. The same listing was found on AbeBooks, the description identical. Even images were picked up from the original listing by the Latvian site. Along with the full description and basics like author and date, they provide a briefer description after the publisher. I can't figure out the purpose of this, as it is a character-limited repeat of some of the description. It is evidently character-limited because the description cuts off mid-word. This site is definitely amateurish.

A comparison of the two listings also reveals how Antiques.gift hopes to make its money. The item's cost on AbeBooks is $450. On Antiques.gift the price is €499. At the time, the euro to dollar conversion rate would put their price at around $525. The $75 is what you pay for the honor of having them place your order on Abe rather than doing it yourself (not that it saves you any time as you still have to place the order on their website).

In one of those examples of great chutzpah (nerve) or irony, whichever you wish to call it, Antiques.gift has a section on copyrights. They say, “The copyright of the bibliographic database is held by Antiques.gift web site and its content suppliers.” If they are claiming copyrights to bookseller-written descriptions for their own, that is very nervy. And if they are claiming the descriptions' copyrights are held by their “content suppliers,” then they certainly aren't honoring those copyrights themselves.

The site is hardly the epitome of professionalism, not a place you might feel particularly comfortable about sending your money or credit card information. The language (English) at times is clearly written by someone for whom English is a second (or third or fourth) language. Some sections show little thought. Part of the FAQ section for sellers picks up paragraphs from the buyers' FAQs, so that it is describing such things as how long it takes to receive a book or how to determine when it has been shipped, information clearly inapplicable to the seller.

I don't know whether any specific laws have been violated by this site. It probably wouldn't matter whether they were, unless it is a Latvian law. Suing them in a Latvian court seems hardly worth the expense anyway. It is hard to imagine many people will buy from this site, except maybe a Latvian customer, of which, we imagine, there aren't too many for your books. However, if you are a bookseller, and receive an order from this outfit with a shipping address to someone else, you might want to send that person a notice that you don't honor these orders, but they are free to buy the same book for less on AbeBooks or another legitimate site.

They lifted all my books without permission from Abebooks including “Memoire pour Dame Barbara Janssen, Veuve Bladen Angloife; Contre les sieurs & demoiselle Broussard” & “Robson’s Royal Court Guide and Peerage for 1839; Commercial Directory of London and the Eastern Counties, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Norfolk, Suffolk” using my description and my scans with Malcolm Books on the scan. Importantly they also have my “Cats and all about Them” that I sold about 3 weeks ago.
Apart from not knowing if they keep all of the payment. There are also countries I do not send to. Very dodgy.

Posted On: 2015-04-02 15:42

User Name: jimgow

Greetings from The Odd Book in Nova Scotia. Noticed this a few weeks ago after our copy of Tobacco: Its Use and Abuse [Habana Cigar Company, 1875] sold and I was trying to find another. Our copy [description & 5 photos] is still listed as available on their site [161 Euros free shipping; our ABE price was $145 US plus shipping]. Depending on your mood and level of tolerance for piracy, more than a few a chortling snorts await in their Disclaimer section, including the seven points of "Disclaimer from requirements for deleting of information". I suspect the poor English is intentional. As far as we know, none of our sales have gone through them. What I dislike most is the appearance of uncommon volumes apparently available for purchase at specific prices that are in fact sold.

<b>19th Century Shop:</b> Charles Darwin on sexuality and the transmission of hereditary characteristics: Autograph Letter Signed to Lawson Tait. Down, 17 January [1877].

<b>19th Century Shop:</b> MILTON, JOHN. <i>Paradise Lost. A Poem written in ten books.</i> London: 1667. A very rare example with the contemporary binding untouched and with a 1667 title page.

<b>19th Century Shop:</b> Hamilton secures the ratification of the Constitution: <i>The Debates and Proceedings of the Convention of the State of New-York, assembled at Poughkeespsie, on the 17th June, 1788.</i>

<b>19th Century Shop:</b> The social contract “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains”: ROUSSEAU, JEAN-JACQUES. <i>Principes du Droit Politique [Du Contract Social]</i>. Amsterdam: Michel Rey, 1762

<b>19th Century Shop:</b> “The first English textbook on geometrical land-measurement and surveying”: BENESE, RICHARD. <i>This Boke Sheweth the Maner of Measurynge All Maner of Lande…</i>

<b>Bonhams New York: Fine Books and Manuscripts Including the World of Hilary Knight. December 5, 2018</b>

<b>Bonhams, Dec 5:</b> KNIGHT, HILARY. The Original Portrait of Eloise that Hung at the Plaza Hotel. $100,000 to 150,000